From the New Zealand Herald today:
Finance Minister Nicola Willis has defended wanting independent advice on the future of Cook Strait ferries from experts charging $2000 a day, “given KiwiRail got us into this mess”.
The Herald has revealed members of the ferry ministerial advisory group have been paid more than $80,000 between them since being appointed just two months ago.
The group was announced after the Government refused to give KiwiRail more money for its mega ferry project – leaving the plan to replace the ageing Interislander fleet dead in the water. Overall costs, including new terminals and wharf upgrades, had ballooned to almost $3 billion.
KiwiRail is now negotiating the exit from a fixed-price $551 million contract signed with Hyundai Mipo Dockyard in 2021.
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
This will give BBC Scotland a story:
“Ferry fiasco – independent advice could cost at least £2000 a day”
This would allow them to rehash all their ‘stories’ before ending with the information that such advice in NZ cost $2000 per day.
Alasdair Macdonald
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BBC and the rest will never let us forget about the Ferries its all they have along with some smears on the FM and his family.I notice BBC Scotland are not going after Rayner over her Tax the way they they go after Nicola Sturgeon.
Thought you might be interested in these two.
In Argyll and Bute Council Dross is asking Lab/Lib voters to vote Tory in election according to article in Tory P@J also this one I posted before.
https://www.energyvoice.com/oilandgas/north-sea/551370/exclusive-business-leaders-extremely-disappointed-as-desnz-confirms-just-35-civil-servants-coming-to-aberdeen/
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Thanks for the link…must remember to keep checking this site for news re energy.
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O/T
I wonder how many unionist councilllors have their fingers in the pies of planning etc across Scotland, just saw this. Anyone know of any English HQ’d party councillors in Scotland, or anywhere, kept to the same standards at all? Be interested to know.
https://www.insider.co.uk/news/snp-councillor-should-resign-over-32560874
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O/T From the BBC News website today (11 April): ‘PM defends NHS record as targets missed in England’. Today’s release of waiting times performance data for NHS England merited a high profile on Radio 4’s Today programme this morning. So what have we learned?
In this online BBC article we’re told: ‘The NHS recovery plan set a target for the end of March for 76% of patients attending A&E to be admitted, transferred or discharged within four hours.’ (The target used to be 95%.)
And then this: ‘.. some 74.2% of patients were seen within four hours in A&Es in March, up from 70.9% in February and the highest figure since April 2023.’ Sounds good?
(The Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) on its website typically issues a statement very shortly after NHS England’s monthly A&E waiting time stats are released. On this occasion, at 1630 hours nothing has appeared yet. Odd! Awaiting its response with interest.)
This is the official data source: https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/Statistical-commentary-March-2024-b64fcb.pdf
The 74.2% figure referred to by the BBC is for ALL A&E sites, including Minor Injury Clinics. For the main 24 hour consultant-led sites (Type 1 sites) – essentially full service emergency departments – only 60.9% of attendances met the four hour waits standard. A rather different picture!
On 12 hour waits timed from arrival at A&E, an accompanying document – ‘Emergency Care Data Set (ECDS) Data
February 2024 and March 2024 (Provisional) Statistical Commentary’ – reports:
‘Of all the total attendances in February 2024, 152,455 waited more than 12 hours from arrival at A&E (11.4%).’
‘Of all the total attendances in March 2024, 147,650 waited more than 12 hours from arrival at A&E (10.3%).’
When the equivalent waits data for the main emergency departments in NHS Scotland were published for February 2024 (the latest monthly release) the RCEM’s press statement noted:
‘One in three patients waited four hours or more in Emergency Departments, one in eight waited eight hours or more, and one in 18 waited 12 hours or more.’
From Public Health Scotland, the stats were reported more clearly than by the RCEM, making comparisons more straightforward:
‘Attendances of over 12 hours: 6,218 (5.2%) patients spent more than 12 hours in A&E (compared to 9,053 (7.4%) the previous month, and 4,913 (4%) monthly average for 2023).’
Recall the March figure for NHS England was 10.3% waiting more than 12 hours. So NHS Scotland is still performing much better.
Weekly reports for March 2024 from NHS Performs on the four hour waits standard in the main emergency departments in Scotland give values ranging from 62.7% up to 65.3%. So still better than its English equivalent but the gap does seems to be narrowing.
The Today programme interviewed someone from the RCEM who argued that hospitals were being incentivised by NHS England (or DHSC?) to ensure the four hour standard was being met as often as possible but improvements in this metric were at the expense of patients with the more difficult medical needs who were left to endure very long waits.
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